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Earwax: A potentially useful medium to identify inborn errors of metabolism?

Krywawych, S; Cleary, M; McSweeney, M; Heales, S; (2020) Earwax: A potentially useful medium to identify inborn errors of metabolism? JIMD Reports , 52 (1) pp. 72-78. 10.1002/jmd2.12102. Green open access

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Abstract

Earwax was investigated as a source to identify patients' different inborn errors of metabolism (IEMs). Acylcarnitines, amino acids, and guanidino metabolites were measured from 28 treated patients with 11 different metabolic disorders including 3 organic acidaemias, 2 fatty acid oxidation defects, 6 amino acid disorders, and 1 peroxisomal abnormality. On the basis of the ratio of different acylcarnitine species relative to free carnitine, isovaleric acidaemia, methylmalonic acidaemia, and long‐chain hydroxyacylCoA dehydrogenase deficiency could be discriminated from the other disorders. For amino acids, neither creatinine nor alternative amino acid proved suitable reference standards against which results could be expressed. However, argininosuccinate and alloisoleucine were present in significantly elevated concentrations in two patients with argininosuccinate lyase deficiency and two patients with branched‐chain ketoacid dehydrogenase deficiency. This study has raised the potential of earwax for investigation of IEMs and may also have role in postmortem investigations. In view of its limited invasiveness, earwax also may have a role as a material to monitor treatment responses and compliance in patients with IEMs.

Type: Article
Title: Earwax: A potentially useful medium to identify inborn errors of metabolism?
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1002/jmd2.12102
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1002/jmd2.12102
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of SSIEM. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: acylcarnitines, amino acids, earwax, guanidino metabolites, postmortem
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Genetics and Genomic Medicine Dept
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10101509
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